Bad Bad You, Bad Bad Me
by EbonyBeach
Summary: "It was boredom, fun, loneliness, alcohol; a connection, comfort - sex. It was nothing... until it was everything." A re-telling of their story from season 5.
1. Want

**Bad Bad You, Bad Bad Me**  
><strong><br>NC-17. AU. Begins at the end of 5x08 (Joe's alleyway).  
>This is it, my baby: the piece I have been striving towards in almost 9 years of writing. It began last summer on my Blackberry on a very rickety Sri Lankan train and remains a (long) work in progress but one I really want to share. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved creating it, especially now when our beloved couple is in jeopardy. Many thanks to Leah for the beta.<strong>

II

**_What you gave me was a reason. Not an excuse. Because there's sex, making love and fucking. And then there's you._**

_iwrotethisforyou[dot]me_

II

The first time it happened, it almost didn't and definitely shouldn't have. It was a fantastic mistake; a desperate connection. It was loneliness and alcohol, lust and anger and forgetting and remembering.

She would never know why she followed him out of Joe's, nor why she opened her mouth and kissed him back. She didn't know him or what he was thinking, or even what she was thinking, but the way his teeth felt on her tongue and the hum of his body as he flattened her to the wall were catalysts for something that had been set in motion long before either of them had realized it.

She walked away knowing he would follow, just a step behind, but of all the boundaries they had crossed together in the short time they had known each other the doorway of her apartment turned out to be one he couldn't confront alone.

"I don't need you," he said again from the hallway and in such a rough voice she was surprised it didn't hurt his throat.

He was trying to justify this to himself, which told her he didn't often follow women back to their apartments. Good, as she wasn't usually eager to be followed. So what was it about him that made everything moral and sensible about her go flying out into the night sky?

Maybe it was the fact that he was hot and she was lonely, or maybe it was just the alcohol they had both consumed – either way, she was in this now with no retreat, and when she stood before him and looked into his eyes she saw someone she barely recognized from their first meeting. It was foreign and scary and even more exhilarating than when Burke had first kissed her in that on call room. He had been practically a stranger then, just as Owen was now, but with Burke there hadn't been half as much anxious anticipation: of words which might trigger something feral in him; of his next, wild move; of when he would pounce on her and kiss her to the floor, and the speed at which she would dissolve when he did.

"You don't have to need me," she told him now, brushing her fingertips down his cheek, feeling him lean into her touch. She wondered when someone had last loved him, put their arms around him, called him their hero.

"You just have to want me."

There wasn't much he was giving away, with his dark unreadable eyes and rapid breathing, but his desire for her was screamingly obvious, buzzing through every atom of the air around them, and she was damn well going to play on that to get what _she_ needed – and wanted – tonight.

She kissed him first, on tiptoes and in the doorframe, and from that moment onwards the lines between their bodies blurred, slipped and fell away until his hands in her hair were her hands; the teeth on her skin her teeth; his clothes ripped off and slipping down her body like she had been wearing them all her life. Hard and soft flesh was pushed together with increasing desperation and more than once the sharp corner of some piece of furniture bruised muscle as they created a trail of destruction around the apartment which was quickly filling up with moans and sweat and the unmistakable scent of lust.

He seemed to know exactly what she wanted with his roughness and his fingertips and the way his gaze just devoured her when she was finally naked and sprawled for him on her bed.

"You're sure this is a good idea?" he murmured, and the way his mouth moved against her ribcage was such a forgotten sensation it almost brought tears to her eyes.

"No," she gasped. And then she was kissing him again.

He was the antithesis of Burke: red, white and blue, and scarred right down to his bones. He was so different and yet exactly the same: he made her scream another name but she still came with such force she could barely breathe; still clung to him as if he was the only thing stopping the world from falling away beneath her. She quickly lost count of positions, surfaces, orgasms; of when his hands were on her boobs, her ass, in her hair or in _her_; of all the places she tasted and touched him, and the noises he made when she did; and of the nothings they whispered in the darkness like the ghosts of all their past lovers were right there with them, staring and shivering and longing to be part of it once again, not realizing that they always were and always would be.

She wondered if it was okay that sometimes, with her eyes closed, she was making love to Burke and he to her; that she was comparing him, mourning him, missing him and hating him in quick, intense bursts, interrupted only by the sting of tears or when the memories became so painful she wrenched her eyes open and blinded herself with Owen's pain instead. She eventually decided, after gazing at him moving above her, that it probably was okay to be elsewhere because, stranger as he was to her, somehow she just knew that she wasn't the woman he was making love to either. And that was fine, because the moments they _were_ there together more than made up for their emotional absences, their distraction; their healing and their tearing apart.

She didn't know what exactly it was that they were doing but it certainly didn't need to be labelled because it was neither good nor bad - it just _was_: they just _were_. And whether or not it changed her, or him, and whether or not she would regret it tomorrow or feel like a whole new person, just didn't matter when he was holding her and she could lose herself in him and feel... Better. Empowered.

Herself.

From the moment she had kissed him in the doorway, he had taken charge and she had let him because it was easy and because, truthfully, she wasn't sure she knew how to handle him. Now, in the after, she still didn't – he was still a mystery and maybe that didn't matter because they probably wouldn't ever do this again. He had well and truly owned her and left purple fingerprints on her thighs to prove it, and she had liked it: to belong to someone again, just for a little while, just once. But mind-blowing as it had been, she wasn't about to get involved with someone so complicated, so lost, so completely broken.

As he was finally getting dressed, at some unearthly hour of the morning, he said seriously: "We shouldn't have done that."

She gazed at his broad back, at the way his muscles moved as he maneuvered his socks, thinking that of all the men she could have found with whom to share one night of truly mind-blowing sex, she had surely picked the best. "So? Maybe you didn't need me, but I needed that."

"You're not going to thank me, are you?"He looked around at her, something glinting in his blue eyes which she hadn't seen since their very first meeting.

"Fuck off," she said softly, and when the corners of his lips curved upwards he was suddenly a different man: a man she had once met, kissed and even – in that wishful place just before sleep – thought about loving.

So much for not getting involved.

II

**_So come on over darlin'  
>and bring those magazines<br>and show me which one's your favorite flaw,  
>'Cause bad bad you and bad bad me<br>Is all we'll be left with, anyway._**

_Stephen Fretwell_

II


	2. Heat

**A/N: **Thank you all for the lovely reviews, I really hope you enjoy this next part too.

* * *

><p>The second time was almost an accident, or at least that's what they told themselves. A distant on-call room, a stuck lock she didn't bother struggling with; a quiet night shift, a single bed.<p>

She didn't think he could have followed her from the cardiology wing when he had been running his own department but he didn't seem at all surprised to find her lying there beneath the sheet, her sneakers and scrub top on a chair which he noisily dragged over to hold the door shut.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" he asked in the least apologetic voice. He looked a thousand times more human than outside Joe's over a week ago now, when he had seemed almost more beast than man - that thought sent a shiver right through her.

Wordlessly, instinctively and inexplicably, she found herself moving aside, drawing back the sheet and inviting him into the bed beside her. He was so warm and for a minute they just lay there, looking at the ceiling; sharing heat and secrets along all the places where their bodies were getting reacquainted.

"I was left at the altar a year ago."

Shocked at her own words, Cristina silently gasped, her heart beating suddenly louder in her ears. She had meant to make small talk about his shift but her question had been intercepted on its way to her mouth and exchanged for something no one in their right mind would admit to a man they barely knew - previous bedroom antics notwithstanding.

He didn't seem to react however, just said calmly: "I left my fiancée around the same time." There was a pause, long enough for her to process his words and to be somehow reassured by them; by the knowledge she wasn't the only one to have failed in a relationship, in love. "Do I remind you of him?"

Cristina turned to him then, wondering if any two men could be so different. "No."

"Good." He looked at her for a long moment before shifting onto his side as well, forming a gap between their bodies. She instantly missed his warmth; their connection. "You don't remind me of her either."

"Good."

He reached out and she let him run the backs of his fingers along the side of her neck. Even though their tryst the other day had been rough and messy – violent even, despite his tender hands and mouth – she knew without a doubt that underneath it all was a very gentle, passionate man; one capable of all the loving she could ever need.

If she wanted it, of course.

"Take off your clothes," she murmured, granting him permission to begin what they had both been thinking about from the moment he left her apartment.

"I still don't need you," he said with a wry smile and it was the first time in the after that he made her laugh.

"Tell me that again in five minutes."

Without invitation he helped her out of her scrub pants, his big hands on her legs making her tremble. He found the yellowing bruises on her thighs and covered them with his mouth, apologizing for marking her even though she had liked it; even though she felt a secret thrill every time she saw them. She hadn't seen him since that night, hadn't imagined they would be here again even though being with him hadn't satiated her but in fact unleashed a torrent of need so powerful and insistent she often wondered how she managed to function properly, and how long she could go on before defying all her instincts and succumbing to him again.

And now here they were, drawn together as if by something else, something beyond them; where it was no longer about fulfilling forgotten desires but savoring them, drawing them out, riding them all the way out of this room and Seattle Grace and everything real and static in their ordinary lives. It was about learning each other: lips, noises, angles; when and where and how she liked to be kissed; how long he could lie back and submit himself to her exquisite hands and mouth for before just taking the lead once again. He was patient this time; selfless, communicative. He asked her if she was enjoying herself and even smiled when she couldn't form an answer. It was such a transformation from the wild, emotional man who had christened her bed but she was quickly finding that she liked this Owen just as much.

And this time there was less Burke; fewer memories of him now that she had laid down some of her new lover. She had thought a lot about both men over the last few days and was beginning to find that thoughts of one were being neatly moved aside by desires - fantasies even - involving the other. She had yet to decide what this meant, or if indeed it meant anything at all and she wasn't just caught up in the lust of it all, but lying there in the small bed afterwards and feeling their hearts beating in time made her wonder if it wasn't all a little bit wonderful; a little bit right.

To add to this, when his pager went off and he got up to leave, he didn't turn back to kiss her and she found herself feeling disappointed. Fortunately she didn't have long to entertain her growing terror at these bizarre new feelings of attachment because her pager began to sing along to his, and after they hurriedly dressed there was time only for a brief smile before rushing off to deal with someone else's pain; someone else's catastrophe.

As it turned out it was only an hour later, when he followed her into a supply closet and - without a single word - kissed her so tenderly it actually took her breath away, that she became truly terrified.

II


	3. Lust

II

The third time, she was just a girl in a bar and he was the guy who couldn't keep his eyes off of her. She was sat across the room with some friends - most of whom he had met in the hospital and quickly forgotten - looking absolutely stunning and occasionally at him: each time she caught his gaze it made him more aroused and more confused. He had no idea where they stood or what she thought of him and their two nights together; all he did know was that she was enough of a distraction to keep his mind off of the war and right now that was what he really needed, even more than conversation or physical contact.

That said however, the sex was _definitely_ helping. He knew exactly what it was too: he was in lust, somewhere he had never really been before. He and his ex-fiancée had been friends first; had fallen in love at roughly an equal pace and before they fell into bed, so when the time came he already knew her inside out and wanted her because of that. Then there was Teddy Altman, a surgeon he met out in the desert who he had thought he might be in love with when he was away from Beth, although she was now far too intimately involved with his horrible nightmares that he couldn't bare thinking about her any more.

And now, watching the mysterious Cristina Yang as she laughed along to some joke, he found himself craving her as he had never craved anyone before - most likely because he had already had a taste and knew just how delicious she was. And that was the worst part: he remembered how her hair smelled; how soft her skin would feel beneath his lips; the curves that lay hidden beneath her clothes - and he knew exactly what he would like to do to her as soon as she gave even the slightest hint that she wanted him in return.

In the past he had made love to Beth whilst imagining she was Teddy, but in the last couple of weeks there had been three lovers vying for his attention - an absurd triangle of beautiful women: one vertex completely familiar, the second a long-standing fantasy and the last an unknown corner he was so keen to explore. And whilst this geometrical analogy was very much unbidden, he didn't necessarily feel guilty for his distraction because he knew that Cristina hadn't been quite there with him either, stuck as she was along the fading vectors of whatever shape her own past lovers inhabited.

But that didn't matter to him – that he was kissing Beth, touching Teddy and then opening his eyes and being overwhelmed by Cristina – because it was just natural and in time, the others would grow fainter and eventually disappear forever.

If he wanted to give it time, of course.

He hadn't been brave enough to kiss Cristina again or even to touch her unless absolutely necessary because he was scared of the spark she would generate; of how much he wanted her; of her rejecting him, and then him having absolutely nothing except a head full of bad dreams. But he wasn't oblivious and tonight, the way she kept gazing at him across the room needed no interpretation: whatever label or excuse she was putting on their little 'fling', she was interested in more, and there was no way he was going to let her go home alone tonight.

A small part of him knew it wasn't a good idea - that in no way was he in a good place to start seeing someone - but then the stronger, more persuasive side of him would crush that argument with the simple words: _it's just sex_.

It was a statement which, although he didn't realize it, was never going to be one hundred percent true – not since they had first met and he had found her to be so beautiful, her lips so sweet.

It was a statement which, in no time at all, would become utterly obsolete.

II

He did go home with her that night: caught her eye as he got up to leave the bar and then waited no more than two minutes outside the front door for her to appear. They sat awkwardly in her apartment drinking wine they couldn't taste until her roommate's keys jangled in the lock and Cristina quickly bundled him into her bedroom, briefly explaining that the newcomer worked in the hospital and she didn't want to fuel the rumor mill, something he was very grateful for. The last thing he needed was questions and knowing looks when it was all he could do to focus on his job these days - be it because of thoughts of Iraq or more recently, entirely different thoughts about his colleague.

He sat in the middle of her bed, watching her move piles of clothes around in an effort to tidy up, before emptying his glass and then asking her to come sit with him. He spent a long moment gazing at her - remembering, learning, memorizing - before saying softly:

"I think you're beautiful."

Maybe it was because he didn't know what else to say or because it had been on his tongue for weeks, or simply because she was. He didn't know her well enough to read the look in her eyes but he definitely noted surprise, and then she began to kiss him and that was that: they were hooked.

He didn't know what tonight was; how it was supposed to feel; what exactly they were supposed to do. Sleeping with someone once was not his standard practice but it had been necessary in so many ways; meeting her for a second tryst truly was almost an accident – he _had_ followed her to that on call room, of course he had, but he'd had no idea what he was looking or hoping for when he got there. He should have known better really, should have recognized that his constant thoughts of her skin and lips and her wonderful hair were really just carnal desires; should have realized that the two of them alone in a bed was only ever going to end one way.

And now, as she climbed into his lap and gifted him with all the friction he so desperately needed, the last rational part of his brain wondered: _is this really just sex?_ Because there was something else there: something else in the way he kissed her, the way his body was responding to her; something about the way she made him _feel_. Truthfully, frighteningly even, it was like she wasn't just a one-night stand now but a lover, someone he was beginning to know and trust and most importantly of all, the one person in the whole world who could take him back to the before; could take away the war and the screaming and the fucking PTSD for as long as she was in his arms, as long as her scent stayed on his skin.

But all those thoughts, speculations – _wishes?_ – became too much for him as she began to pull off her clothes and quickly overwhelmed him with the curves of her waist and hollow of her navel; the pattern of her ribs and swell of her breasts. She was beautiful, sexy and one hundred percent Cristina – there was no room for Beth or Teddy tonight, especially when she moaned so throatily and hissed when his teeth met her nipple and threw her head back as her fingernails buried into his shoulders.

"Cristina."

He just loved the way her name sounded, floating softly on the air; finding its own place amongst their heavy breathing and the rustle of bedclothes and heartbeats. He didn't know what he wanted to say to her – what was there to say, really? – but words failed him anyway when she gazed into his eyes and all he could see reflected back was trust, and longing, and lust. Gone were the fear and indecision that had peppered their first, wild encounter: the reckless spontaneity, the creeping '_We shouldn't have done that' _feeling that was almost, but never quite, regret. The second time he'd also been aware of a sort of hesitance in her, even as she gave him her all physically; she let him have just the smallest piece of herself and kept all the rest close to her chest – ironically, the same chest his mouth and fingertips had spent their time becoming so familiar with.

Not that he gave away any pieces of himself in return. Not that he knew how to, anymore.

Now though, tonight, right here in her bedroom once again, something was obviously changing for her too, and the realization that she was no longer scared of him - of them and whatever the hell they were - made Owen want her a hundred, thousand times more. Lust was a wonderful, powerful thing, he thought in the moments before he let go and surrendered his body to her: that which had ruined so many others before him, from star-crossed Shakespearean lovers to people he knew, friends who had been cheated on and lost everything for the sake of a kiss, a motel room, a hideous mistake - lust might actually be his savior.

It was such a focused emotion, intense and all-consuming: in other words, it was exactly what he needed right now in his never-ending battle to forget everything that haunted him. The only problem was, lust was self-propagating, a positive feedback loop: the further he fell in, the deeper it pulled him, over and over again. Every single time he set eyes on Cristina Yang he felt it grow within him, felt it tear at his insides and shimmer in his skull so that he had to stop what he was doing and let it run its course: vivid flashbacks and bright new fantasies, unable to catch his breath, blood rushing to all the wrong parts of his body – the same kind of overwhelming systemic reaction as a PTSD episode but the absolute antithesis. It was both energizing and terrifying all at once, and seeing her and experiencing such a rush every day felt like all he was living for right now.

But then, the thing he refused to let himself think about tonight, or ever if he could help it: what would happen when the lust ran out? He knew it was too big an emotion to keep a hold of for too long - exhausting, punishing, finite. There was a good reason affairs didn't last, newlyweds settled down, the best relationships were tested, and sometimes failed.

Or, worse still than it running out – what if, on an ordinary day not too far from now, the lust became something else entirely?

II

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><p><strong>AN: **Once again, I can't thank you enough for all the kind reviews. They are very inspiring and I really love reading them. :)


	4. Unraveling

**A/N:** Once again, can't thank you all enough for lovely reviews, makes it all worthwhile. This is a slight change of tone - hope you enjoy.

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><p>II<p>

That night in her apartment, when he first told her she was beautiful, was the beginning of the end. From then on there was no more pretending they weren't interested or that it wasn't a good idea - there was only sex, sex and more sex. Their routine set in quickly: if he wasn't waiting for her in the foyer of an evening, she would shower and go round to his place. It quickly became a comfort, a connection between two lonely souls; a way to pass the time, to warm up at night and most of all, a lot of fun. They both loved the anticipation of working together - the sly brush of her hand along his arm or his breath on her neck as they saved another life - and then sneaking away to revel in the heat they had been building up all day. And they were good together, really good: so good in fact that that in itself became a reason, a justification.

Those weeks were full of ups and downs for Cristina: the interns' stupid secret surgery, where all the blame somehow landed on her shoulders; the pride at winning first solo surgery and then the humiliation and injustice of it being taken away; having to choose her own replacement; the fight with Meredith.

The sex with Owen in the vent room. The way she laughed in the gusts of hot air when she'd thought she just wanted to cry; the way he gazed at her and smiled and became the strong one for the both of them. Then the way he kissed her and pulled her close to his lean, hard body; slipped his hands beneath her scrubs, drew on her skin with his fingertips all the things he was about to do to her, all the ways he wanted to make her feel, to breathe, to scream.

The things that had happened on that vent... Just thinking about them made her blush, made hot swirls of echoing desire pool deep inside of her. He was a phenomenal lover: passionate like it was going out of fashion, intense and increasingly less distracted, more present, more _there_. Just like she was leaving Burke behind, she felt he was leaving his exes in the past as well. And damn, it was so nice having someone to flirt with, to play; someone who was there in the evenings without the expectation of dinners and dates, of having to dress up and make small talk and consider the possibility of falling in love.

Not that she wasn't... Not intentionally, anyway. She didn't want to fall in love, with him or anyone else, because it was exhausting and complicated and last time she did, well... Look how that ended. She wasn't ready to start singing over cadavers again anytime soon.

She wanted more than anything to confide in Meredith: despite herself, she longed to hear the inevitable: "_What? _You're _what? _Since _when?_" Cristina often wondered if her person would be pleased at the news she was sleeping with the quiet, mysterious, often volatile head of the ER – she knew that was how he was perceived, even if the real Owen, the one she was getting to know, could be funny and sexy and, when he was in the right mood, surprisingly good company.

That was until the day she'd accidentally woken him up in an on call room. She'd been looking for a quickie after her tedious night shift, but as soon as she turned on the light and he started so violently, she knew that something was wrong. And then his ex-fiancée appeared, right in the middle of their lives, right there in the corridors that Cristina roamed looking for him, hoping to whisk him away for a wicked interlude.

And he freaked out big time.

She almost didn't go round to his place that night, almost texted to tell him they should leave it until following day. She didn't want to see him so upset: it was weird and personal and she felt she was embarrassing him by being around when he was so vulnerable – the same kind of vulnerability she'd witnessed their first night together and been so afraid of. But then she needed him tonight, after another hellish shift bickering with Meredith, and they'd not managed to get together for a couple of days.

The front door of his apartment was ajar when she arrived: inside, he was sitting on the couch staring into the distance. He didn't even greet her when she said hello and she hovered in the entrance, a few feet away from him.

"So, do you wanna talk about it?"

He didn't look at her, but he looked weary. She noticed a tumbler and bottle of Scotch on the floor. "Not really."

"Good. Me neither. Do you wanna dance it out?"

"What?" He glanced at her impatiently, then dropped his gaze and downed the rest of his drink.

"Dance it out. Meredith and I... well, we used to dance things out. Before she got all self-righteous and _'No need to make it personal'_ and started falling for fricking Death Row guy." She knew she was rambling. "Whatever."

There was a pause. Owen stared at his hands in his lap and she decided to test the waters. She tugged off her sweater, slipped off her shoes, unpinned her hair and brushed it out with her fingers. She looked good in a kind of ruffled, long-day-at-work way, and she knew it.

"Do you think you might want to... fuck it out?"

He looked up in surprise then: she noted the way his gaze roamed over her body and realized he was quite drunk. His voice was rough when he spoke. "I- No, I don't think so. Not tonight."

It was the first time he'd ever turned her down and she was shocked to find that it hurt. She turned away from him, pretending to shrug it off. "Okay. Fine. Whatever."

Too many _whatevers_, she thought absently. Her whole life was a _whatever_ right now: her career without a mentor, her wellbeing without her person, her love life without love.

There was an awkward silence. She could feel his eyes on her back and it was making her hot all over. She leaned on the breakfast bar, then changed her mind and pulled her hair back up into a ponytail, sweeping the strands off her prickling skin. She didn't know what to do: she didn't want to leave him in this state, really, when he seemed so thoroughly miserable. She generally locked away whatever fleeting, deeper feelings she thought she had for him in a carefully constructed box – it sat in the back of her heart next to the one that contained all the bits of Burke she could never bring herself to throw away.

Now though, as a colleague and, she supposed, a friend she couldn't leave before making sure Owen was alright. Who else did he have in the world, anyway?

But before she had decided what to say, he was suddenly standing right behind her, his palms hot on her bare arms and a hard-on the size of the Space Needle pressing into her ass.

"It's the back of your neck," he murmured, grazing his teeth there. His hands slid under her tank top and she gasped as he raked his fingernails over her skin. "I think I'd like to fuck it out after all."

_It's your smell,_ she thought distractedly as he began to explore her breasts, her hip bones; as he broke through the barrier of her panties and really made her moan. _It's your body, your lips, your everything. _

He took her right to the edge as they stood there, twisting her neck so that he could kiss her, rocking his pelvis against her and making enough noise for the both of them. His mouth was deliciously wet and whisky-flavored, and she only broke contact right at the end, crying out as her orgasm slammed through her and his strong arms were all that kept her from falling to the floor.

"Take off your clothes," he said hoarsely as he let her go and began to strip off, echoing her words from the night she had first witnessed his softer side. But that was long gone now, she realized as he lifted her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom, where the only light came from back in the hallway.

And there, in the almost-darkness, he fucked her up against the wall and she knew that she had lost him again - that tonight she was Beth, or another of his demons, or whatever the hell else he was constantly fighting against. He was back to being slightly frightening, intimidating in his wildly emotional state and completely closed off, and it really hammered something home to her: _even if we wanted to, we cannot be in a relationship._ He had seemed pretty stable over the past month or so, but from the moment she had startled him awake that morning and through everything that had happened, she saw now that he was no different from the man who had pounced on her outside Joe's; that she had glossed over his problems in her lust-fuelled state and really underestimated how seriously messed up he was.

He came quickly, his face buried in her neck and she held him, not sure if he was shaking from exertion or emotion – and not wanting to find out, either. Back in the living room he handed her her clothes without looking at her, and then when she was dressed, held open the front door.

_Is this it?_ she wondered, trying to work out if she was losing her dignity or her mind, or both. _Is this him, underneath it all? _Even as she thought it, she knew that wasn't true. The last half hour - in fact, the whole day - had been incredibly surreal and suddenly she felt exhausted.

He put his hand on her arm when she was halfway out the door; she didn't look up but could hear him breathing heavily. "I'm sorry, Cristina. I shouldn't have done that... You don't deserve..."

She turned around and the pain etched into every line of his face was almost too much to bear. There was no denying it: she really did care for this scarred, broken man. It went beyond sex, beyond the physical and into the realm of... what exactly? Friends with benefits? Fuck buddies? Lovers? But trying to define it was far too much for her right now and anyway, she'd done the whole defining thing with Burke and had ended up simply 'jilted'.

Now, Cristina lifted her hand and held Owen's cheek in her palm. It was eerily reminiscent of their first encounter, like they were doing it all backwards - unraveling each other right back to the beginning.

"If I hadn't wanted it, I would damn well have said so," she murmured, unable to keep the tenderness from her voice. When he looked so helpless, she just could not walk away. "We deserve each other. We're both fucked up."

He closed his eyes, leaned into her touch. "You have no idea."

"No. Maybe one day."

"Maybe."

But like everything else in their relationship, neither of them had any idea what she meant by that.

II


End file.
